Real-world pulp is everywhere you turn these days. And since our mission here at Pulp Intl. includes not just showing you wonderful pulp art from days gone by, but charting modern day pulp incidents wherever and whenever they occur, here’s a little roundup of the previous week, a seven day span that included the shooting death of another boxer, the arrest of more than forty people—including rabbis and Democratic officials—for fraud, and the clandestine peephole recording of sportscaster Erin Andrews, who later admitted the blurry nude steaming up the internet with a hotcurler and a fresh bikini wax was indeed her.

Vernon Forrest’s murder brings to three the number of ex-athletes killed in July. Steve McNair ran afoul of a disturbed lover, and Arturo Gatti is thought by Brazilian police to have gotten similar treatment from his wife, but Vernon Forrest seems to have been killed for money. The former welterweight and light middleweight champ reportedly was at a gas station putting air in the tires of his car when a man approached and asked for money. Nine of ten people probably would have freaked in that situation, but what did a former boxing champ known as the Viper have to fear? So he took out his wallet—which the man promptly snatched and bolted with. Forrest gave chase, and at some point exchanged gunfire with the robber. Either during that exchange, or a few moment later as he fled back toward his car, he was shot multiple times—and the world lost yet another great athlete who had provided so many thrilling memories.

We move to the subject of Erin Andrews, the popular ESPN sportscaster who was illicitly recorded nude in a hotel room. Yes, we analyzed the dirty little .avi file, and we have to wonder why she didn’t just deny being the figure in the recording. To our discerning eyes it does appear to be her, but there is no way to be 100% sure. If she had denied it, the official record on the story would have read “hoax,” and that would have made anyone claiming otherwise a crackpot by definition. Don’t get us wrong—we’re not among those who think the whole thing was a publicity stunt. We’re pretty sure we know those when we see them. Besides, just watching Andrews fret over her body and do those weird semi-squats is enough to convince us she truly thought she was unobserved. But having been recorded in such poor quality, why not deny it? Perhaps she’s simply honest—to a fault.

For a good example of people whose fault is dishonesty, observe the New Jersey 44 (™ Pulp Intl.). Several of those snared have already professed total innocence, though it’s hard to manage an effective denial when one of your crowd has already admitted trafficking in human kidneys for more than ten years. We think it’s safe to say the dominoes in Jersey will soon begin to tumble, and when they do, the line of crooks outside the Newark prosecutor’s office waiting to turn state’s evidence will look like the Late Show queue outside the Ed Sullivan Theater. The whole situation is ripe for ridicule, but frankly, we’ve exhausted ourselves making fun of Rod Blagojevich, Silvio Berlusconi, and Sarah Palin, so let’s just put the New Jersey 44™ in the UFC octagon and see who survives. The blood drenched winner receives a full pardon, a lifetime supply of Oxy-Clean, and dibs on all the salvageable organs.

The American television show Dateline has decided to dig into three-and-a-half year old missing persons case involving singer Olivia Newton-John. Newton-John’s boyfriend of nine years, Patrick McDermott, vanished from a fishing boat in June 2005, and was presumed dead, though his body was never found. Now the producers of Dateline have hired a team of private detectives in an attempt to prove McDermott staged his own death.

McDermott had filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and was reportedly five figures in debt when he disappeared. He had a $100,000 life insurance policy of which his son was the listed beneficiary. Philip Klein, who is the lead investigator on the case, said during a Dateline interview, “[McDermott is] alive, there’s no doubt in my mind, he’s alive. Maybe in his mind if he stages his death, the insurance policy will pay off all his debts and he can leave his child a gift by pretending he’s dead.”

Klein went so far as to launch the website findpatrickmcdermott.com, which has yielded two important pieces of information. First, because the website was designed to track visitors, he says Olivia Newton-John or her “camp” logged on from every hotel in which the singer stayed during a recent tour of Asia. But more importantly, he is now sure that McDermott himself has logged on repeatedly from South America, possibly from a boat on which he lives. Klein’s team is currently scouring the region for clues.

Watergate figure was known for thirty years only by a suggestive pseudonym.

Famed whistleblower Mark Felt aka Deep Throat died yesterday of heart failure in Santa Rosa, California at the age of 95. In 1972 Felt was instrumental in helping Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein break open the infamous Watergate scandal, which remains one of the most important events in American history.

At the time, Felt was an FBI operative frustrated by the slow pace of investigation into a break-in at Democratic Party Headquarters at Washington, D.C.’s Watergate Hotel. It seemed clear to him that Republican operatives—possibly directed by President Richard Nixon—were likely involved, and that they were sabotaging the FBI investigation. Felt took matters into his own hands by secretly meeting with Bob Woodward during the Post’s investigation of the crime.

At these meetings, which took place in the dead of night in a Virginia parking garage, Felt gave Woodward crucial FBI information. They agreed that Felt’s identity could not be revealed, and that was when Woodward coined the Deep Throat moniker. Felt coined his own immortal phrase: “Follow the money.” That advice helped keep Woodward and Bernstein moving in the right direction during their investigation, and today is a mantra for investigative reporters seeking the truth behind political scandals, as well as an almost universal insight into human motivation.

When the Watergate scandal broke, Nixon resigned the presidency rather than be impeached. The event is often cited as the first major blow to the American public’s belief that their presidents were incorruptible. In that way, Mark Felt helped usher in an age of political cynicism. When he finally revealed his true identity in 2005, the Watergate saga was replayed and he was criticized and praised anew for his role. But whether hero or traitor, he is without question one of the most important Americans of his time.

Italian police carried out a large raid today against organized crime figures suspected of having links to gangster Matteo Messina Denaro. Denaro, along with other aspirants, is vying to be the first to rebuild the Sicily-based Cosa Nostra, which collapsed after the 2006 arrest of then-boss Bernardo Provenzano, and the 2007 arrest of heir apparent Salvatore Lo Piccolo.

Altogether, police made around 100 arrests in the Sicilian capitol of Palermo, and on the Italian mainland in the Tuscany region. The operation, nicknamed Perseus after the mythical Greek hero who killed Medusa, was carried out with the backing of helicopters and police dogs, and was the culmination of a nine-month investigation. Those jailed will be charged with variety of offences, including extortion of arms and drug trafficking.

Anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso said at a press conference that, “While the 2006 operation had brought Cosa Nostra to its knees, Perseus prevented it from rearing its head again.” Meanwhile Denaro, who is sometimes described as a playboy and is famous enough to have earned a L’Espresso cover and an infamous Warhol-style tribute from an anonymous Italian graffiti artist, remains at large.

85 year-old former pin-up queen Bettie Page was hospitalized in Los Angeles this week after a heart attack and is critically ill. Page rose to fame as an erotic model during the 1950s, posing for scores of magazines, and appearing in more than fifty short films. She worked extensively with sister and brother publicity team Paula and Irving Klaw, who sold Page’s material from their firm Movie Star News. In 1955, Irving Klaw came under investigation during the U.S. Senate’s Kefauver Hearings, which were a politically motivated attempt to draw a link between pornography and juvenile delinquency. Under pressure, Klaw shuttered Movie Star News, and Page’s modeling career ended.

Page dropped from public view, spent time as Christian missionary, and married twice more (she had wed and divorced twice already). In 1979, Hollywood’s Belier Press reprinted some Page photos from private camera club sessions for which she had posed in 1950. The shots rekindledinterest in Page, and in time a full-blown web-cult formed. In 2005 a motion picture entitled The Notorious Bettie Pagewas released by HBO with Gretchen Mol in the lead role. The film received wide acclaim, and further cemented Page’s legacy.

As one of the first mainstream nude models, Page is credited with helping usher in the women’s movement. At that time frank depictions of female nudity were considered empowering, and Page’s popularity, as well as her special gift for embodying nudity as a natural state, dovetailed with the movement’s goals. Photographer and fellow pin-up Bunny Yeager, who shot the Modern Sunbathing & Hygiene cover above, offered an opinion in 1956 about Page’s appeal: “The first thing I noticed was that for some reason when she’s nude she doesn’t seem naked. [snip] Bettie’s attitude toward her lovely, healthy body is the essence of nudism.”

The first Scientology church, based on the writings of science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, is established in Los Angeles, California. Since then, the city has become home to the largest concentration of Scientologists in the world, and its ranks include high-profile adherents such as Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

1933—Blaine Act Passes

The Blaine Act, a congressional bill sponsored by Wisconsin senator John J. Blaine, is passed by the U.S. Senate and officially repeals the 18th Amendment to the United States Constitution, aka the Volstead Act, aka Prohibition. The repeal is formally adopted as the 21st Amendment to the Constitution on December 5, 1933.

1947—Voice of America Begins Broadcasting into U.S.S.R.

The state radio channel known as Voice of America and controlled by the U.S. State Department, begins broadcasting into the Soviet Union in Russian with the intent of countering Soviet radio programming directed against American leaders and policies. The Soviet Union responds by initiating electronic jamming of VOA broadcasts.

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.

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